J.M.J.
Author's note: Thank you for continuing to read! Thank you especially to MargaretA66, Candylou, max2013, and caseykam. I'd especially like to welcome MargaretA66 and caseykam back—it's great to hear from both of you again! MargaretA66, you're absolutely right that the average cost of living in California vs. Massachusetts (where Bayport is located in my universe) is about the same. I think Phil is just homeless and disillusioned, so any excuse to complain. As for why he's staying if he hates it so much, I think that probably has to do with the facts that a) there are no tech companies in Bayport, so he's going to have to leave home anyway, b) he does have friends here in California so it's not quite so lonely as most other places would be, and c) he's only been here for less than four months at this point, and really doesn't want to have it on his resumé that his first job in the field he wants to have a career in was so short-lived. Candylou, the only part of your review that isn't 100% is where you say you're probably wrong! ;) I really like the Prodigal Son comparison. It hadn't occurred to me, but it actually fits pretty well. I hope you continue to enjoy the story! This chapter is where the action really starts to heat up. God bless!
Chapter IV
It was close to noon on Saturday, which meant that half the tenants of the apartment were still fast asleep. Joe would have made it three-fourths, but he still hadn't found his phone and that fact was coming so close to driving him crazy that he had hardly slept at all that night, let alone sleeping in late. The other quarter of the tenants who was awake was Tony, who was always an early riser. He had already gone for an early morning jog with Axel, bought groceries for himself for the next week (although he knew perfectly well most of them would get eaten by his roommates), done some more cleaning, and made lunch. He was eating and playing on his phone with Axel lying next to his chair when Joe walked in from another fruitless search at the beach for his phone.
"Didn't find it?" Tony asked without even bothering to look up.
"Nope." Joe went straight for the refrigerator and pulled out the jug of orange juice that Tony had just bought. "If I did leave it at the beach, I think it's gone for good."
"I could have told you that," Tony replied, choosing not to comment on the orange juice. "I mean, if anyone found a phone down there, they're not going just leave it lying around. They'll either keep it or turn it into the police. Did you check with the police?"
"Mm-hmm." Joe nodded while he rummaged around the fridge to find anything more substantial to eat. "Nobody's turned it in."
"Then, too, even if it was somehow still out on the beach, it could have gotten washed away with the tide or buried in sand, and either way, you'd never find it, not that it would be any use anymore if you did," Tony went on.
"I know, I know. It's just annoying. I always thought I was pretty good at solving mysteries, and now after just a few months, I can't even find a missing cell phone." Joe paused with his head still in the fridge as he tried to think this out. "I guess you're probably right. I probably did leave it at the beach, considering I was in kind of a hurry to leave, and somebody picked it up. They must meant to keep it, but then they realized it was locked, so they threw it away. So it's probably in any one of thousands of garbage bins in this city."
"I think you better just get a new phone instead of digging through thousands of garbage bins, if you want my two cents."
Joe was about to give a snarky reply to this when Axel raised his head with his muzzle toward the front door. A warning growl rumbled in his chest.
Tony reached down and scratched his ears. "Hey, boy, what's the matter?"
Axel only growled again. Then he got up and crept to the door. He shoved his nose at the crack under the door and growled once more.
Joe and Tony glanced at one another. Tony hadn't had Axel long, but this was very strange behavior for the typically mellow dog. He didn't even act this way toward strangers; at least, not strangers that had been invited.
With a finger to his lips, Joe silently closed the refrigerator door and crept toward the front door. He signaled to Tony to stand on the other side of it. Tony had been involved in enough Hardy investigations to know not to stand directly in front of it. Then, being as silent as possible, Joe opened the door. There was no one there, so he went outside.
It felt a little strange sneaking around like this after all this time, but it was also oddly invigorating. Joe realized with a bit of mixed feelings that he really had been missing detective work more than he realized, if even such a tiny mystery as what a dog was growling at could give him such a rush of excitement. Maybe…
Before he could finish that thought, he had reached the corner of the building and peered around. Joe wasn't sure what he was expecting to see, but it certainly wasn't what met his eyes. A young woman was standing underneath the window of Tony and Phil's room, stretching up on her toes to try to look inside. Joe recognized her immediately
"Darcy?" he said.
The girl gasped and whirled her head around to look at him, jumping away from the window as she did.
Joe had reached her before she try to run off. "What are you trying to do, breaking into an occupied apartment in the middle of the day?"
"I wasn't breaking in," Darcy protested. "I just wanted to talk to Phil."
"There are immensely less creepy ways of doing that." Joe folded his arms. "But then you never were one to do things the less creepy way."
By this time, the window was open and Phil was looking out at the bizarre scene. Tony had run around the corner of the house, holding Axel by the collar.
"What's going on?" Tony asked.
"What are you doing here?" Phil demanded from Darcy.
"I just wanted to talk to you," Darcy replied, looking at the ground.
"She was trying to break in," Joe added. "I think we should call the police."
"What?" Darcy whipped her head around to look at him. "The police? You wouldn't. I didn't do anything wrong. I just wanted to talk to Phil and give something to him."
"I don't want anything from you." Phil turned away from the window and disappeared into the apartment.
"Wait! It's just a note!" Darcy pulled an envelope out of her pocket and waved it.
Joe snatched it out of her hand. "Give that to me."
"Hey, that's private!"
"So's a guy's apartment." Joe considered tearing the envelope open, but he didn't. He didn't know whether Darcy would write some gooshy love letter to Phil or a threat of some kind, but either way, he didn't want to read it. "Now get out of here, before I really do call the police."
Darcy glared at him. "You wouldn't. There'd be an investigation. You'd have to tell them everything."
Joe recoiled inwardly in disgust. What Darcy was saying was true, and he knew it perfectly well, which was why his mention of the police was all a bluff. He had hoped she wouldn't call that bluff. He lowered his voice so that Tony wouldn't hear. "And if I did, you'd be answering for a lot more than attempted burglary."
For a few moments, Darcy continued to glare, as if she was weighing whether Joe was really serious about calling the police or not. Then she hissed through clenched teeth where she'd like to see Joe go, turned on her heel, and stalked away.
When Joe had gotten back inside, all his roommates were in the main room. Phil was pacing back and forth, like he was trying to get a grip on himself, while Tony was at the front door, still holding Axel's collar, and Shaun was standing close to his bedroom door, looking half-asleep and utterly bewildered.
Joe held out the envelope he had taken from Darcy to Phil. "Here's this."
Phil pinched the corner with his thumb and forefinger as if it was contaminated. "I've got just the place for it," he said as he went to the sink and dropped it in the waste basket underneath it.
"Uh, so anyone gonna tell me what's going on around here?" Shaun asked.
There was close to half a minute of no one saying a word. The only movement either Joe or Phil made was to look at each other and try to decide whether the other was going to say anything or not.
"Darcy was looking in my bedroom window while I was asleep," Phil explained finally. "If that's not enough to convince you she's a creep, I don't know what is."
A goofy smile spread across Shaun's face. "I wouldn't mind it if she did that to me."
Phil groaned in disgust, while Joe pinched the bridge of his nose and declared, "I think I'm going to be sick."
Shaun threw his hands in the air. "What's with you guys, anyway? I feel like I'm living in a monastery or something. Do you guys have something against fun?"
"Just your brand of it," Joe muttered.
"You know, actually, it's more like living with my judgy aunt who's always clicking her tongue in disapproval at me," Shaun complained. "If none of you guys want to have a good time, whatever. Your loss. That doesn't mean you get to treat my girlfriends like trash."
"If that's your taste in girlfriends, then, actually, yes, it does," Phil snapped back. "Don't you even care what kind of person she is?"
"You won't tell me what she did," Shaun insisted. "I mean, you say she cheated, but you won't give any deets. Like, I'm starting to think she didn't do anything. She just realized what a loser you are and dumped you, so you made up the whole thing to get back at her."
"Of all the…" Phil took a step forward, fists clenched.
It took both Joe and Tony a moment to react, considering that they had never actually seen Phil mad enough to take a swing at someone. Joe was too far back to do more than take a step forward himself, but Tony jumped in between the two and held his hands out.
"Hey, hey, hey, everybody, let's just calm down here. I just cleaned this place up. I don't need you guys wrecking it again."
There was a few seconds' downbeat. Then Phil relaxed his shoulders slightly.
"I need some fresh air," he announced and headed toward the door.
"I don't think he'd better go anywhere alone," Joe said and followed him.
Tony looked at Shaun. "I'm going to try to get to the bottom of this. You just stay here and try to cool off."
It wasn't particularly to Phil's liking to find that both Joe and Tony were following him. He refused to talk to either of them. Of course, Joe didn't try to say much, and all Tony did was ask about Darcy, so it wasn't hard to keep a stony silence.
Finally, Tony gave up trying to learn why there was such an air of mystery around Darcy. He thought for a minute or two and then he said, "You know what, guys? I think we've been stuck in a rut for too long. We've been out here quite awhile now, and there's a lot more of California than just that beach or this city. Why don't we go see some of it tomorrow? None of us are working, except Shaun, and maybe it wouldn't be a bad thing to have some space. We could leave first thing in the morning and drive up the coast. There's a whole bunch of places we could stop and see."
"I thought you and Joe went to church every Sunday," Phil replied. He wasn't in the mood to agree to anything right off the bat, so any excuse was a good one.
"We can go tonight," Tony suggested. "How about it, Joe?"
"Yeah. A change of scenery sounds good," Joe agreed.
A bit reluctantly, Phil added an unimpassioned, "Okay. Sure."
HBHBHBHBHB
From the flurry of activity in the kitchenette in the Hardy apartment, a casual observer would have assumed Callie was getting ready for a holiday feast. At the very least, it looked like it was an invitation to the in-laws or employers. It certainly didn't look like simply inviting an old friend over for dinner. Yet, that's exactly what it was. It was one of the few and far between times that it worked out for Iola Morton to come for the evening. Privately, Callie wondered if Iola's falling-out with Joe had more to do with the difficulty they had had in finding time to spend together than Iola's supposedly busy schedule. In a way, Callie wouldn't have blamed her if it was, but the fact remained that Iola was her best friend. The fact that she and Callie's brother-in-law had had broken up shouldn't make any difference to Callie and Iola's friendship.
All at the same time, the timer on Callie's phone went off and the pot on the stovetop started boiling over. Callie scrambled for the pot while calling, "Frank! I could use a little help in here!"
"What can I do?" Frank asked as he reported for duty.
"Could you check the chicken to make sure it's done?" Callie requested as she carried the pot over to the sink and drained the potatoes inside.
Frank pulled the thermometer out of the drawer and stuck it into one of the pieces of chicken. "A hundred and sixty-five degrees. Looks like it's done."
"Oh, shoot. Iola's not even here yet. Well, leave it in the oven to stay hot, but turn it down. I don't want it to burn."
As Frank adjusted the temperature, he asked, "Anything else I can do?"
"Yeah. Since it looks like we're going to have to eat as soon as Iola gets here, we need the dinner rolls heated up and the green salad tossed."
"I'm on it." Frank put the rolls in the oven and then got the salad out of the fridge, noting that there was also a jello salad in there, too. "Chicken, mashed potatoes, two salads, dinner rolls, dessert." Frank ticked them off on his fingers as he counted them. "Don't you think you're overdoing it a little, Cal?"
"Well…maybe," Callie admitted. "I just want Iola to know we're not upset with her."
Frank was going to ask why Iola would think they were upset with her, but just then, the doorbell rang. Callie gasped, suddenly even more flustered as she glanced down at herself and remembered she was simply wearing a t-shirt and jeans and had her hair in a messy ponytail in case of an accident in the kitchen.
"That must be Iola, and I'm not even close to being ready. You stall her off, Frank," Callie requested, just before noticing that her husband's attire wasn't any better than her own.
"Cal, it's fine," Frank assured her. "It's just Iola. It's not like we're having the mayor over for dinner."
He went and opened the door. Sure enough, Iola Morton was standing on the doorstep. She smiled at Frank, but—maybe it was the suggestion from Callie that there was something wrong—she seemed a little nervous
For his part, Frank smiled and held out his hand to her. "Hi, Iola. How have you been? It's been a long time."
That seemed to put Iola at ease a little more and she smiled back as she shook hands. "No kidding. I've been well. And you?"
Callie was relieved to see that Iola was just as casually dressed as she was. She hurried forward and gave Iola a hug. "We've been great. It's so good to see you again."
"You, too. Both of you." Iola took several halting steps toward the nearest couch. "I hope you don't mind if I sit down."
"Of course not. Can I get you anything to drink?" Frank asked.
"Just water would be fine, please," Iola requested.
As Frank went to fetch the drink, Callie explained, "Dinner is just about ready, if you'll excuse me for a couple seconds."
When Frank returned, he did the best he could to make small talk and try to put Iola at her ease. Iola seemed to not be too eager to talk to him and kept looking away, which only succeeded in making Frank nervous, too.
"So, anyway," Frank said, "I hear you've been dating somebody."
That was obviously the wrong question. Iola's face turned an alarming shade of red and the stammering noises she made as she tried to answer sounded more like she was suffocating than trying to talk.
"Sorry," Frank said quickly. "I didn't mean to…"
"No, no, it's okay," Iola finally managed to get out. "It's just…I just…I didn't…I didn't think anyone knew about that. How did you hear?"
Frank shrugged, trying to pretend it hadn't been any big deal. Besides, since Iola obviously didn't want the news out, Frank didn't want to tell her that it was her own brother, Chet, who had mentioned it to him a couple of weeks ago.
"It doesn't matter anyway," Iola added. "That's all through anyway. He was a nice enough guy, but we really didn't have anything in common."
"Oh, okay. Sorry I mentioned it," Frank said awkwardly. He was starting to get the impression that maybe Callie's worries weren't unfounded after all.
HBHBHBHBHB
It was close to seven when Mass was over. Joe's plan had been to head straight for the car, but he and Tony had driven together, so he had to wait while Tony stopped to talk to a young woman he seemed to know. She had long, dark hair in a braid down her back and she tended to keep her hands together in front of her, all of which together gave her a somewhat shy appearance. Her smile was genuine enough, though, as Tony introduced her as Jenna Ridgeley.
"Oh, right. Tony mentioned you," Joe said.
Jenna chuckled. "I hope he didn't tell you too much of the truth."
"If the truth is something you don't want getting out, then it must have been all lies he told me," Joe replied.
"Tony tells me that you're one of his roommates," Jenna went on. "Why don't you ever come to the young adult nights?"
"Um, well…" Joe scrambled for a reply that would be polite but also noncommittal.
"He thinks only desperate single people go to them," Tony supplied.
"Thanks," Joe said sarcastically.
"Oh, come on, it isn't all desperate singles," Jenna said. "There's, like, three of us who aren't there to try to find a date."
"See what I mean?" Joe asked, addressing the question more to Tony than Jenna.
"Okay, it's fair," Jenna admitted. "But the only way to fix the problem is to get more people coming who can breathe some life into it. Speaking of which, Tony, I found some materials for the next meeting and I wanted to see what you thought, if you've got a minute."
Joe raised his hand in a slow wave. "I'm probably going to busy whatever night the next one is on, so I'll just head on out to the car. Don't take too long, Tony."
"It'll just be a minute," Tony replied. He added in a lower tone to Jenna, "Don't worry. I'll get him talked into coming one of these times."
Joe chuckled and shook his head as he went out to the parking lot. By now, most people had left. Joe and Tony had gotten there later than most, and so they had had to park on the far side of the lot. Most of other cars in that area were gone by this time, but Joe didn't think anything of that, even though it was starting to get dark.
He pressed the unlock button on the key fob and was about to get in the car when he heard someone come up behind.
"Excuse me?" said a male voice that was vaguely familiar.
"Yeah?" Joe turned around, but he didn't get a chance to see the other person before he was hit in the face with a stream of pepper spray. "Augh!" He instantly covered his face with his hands, but it was too late. His eyes, nose, and mouth were burning and he was already starting to cough so hard he doubled over.
The other person grabbed him by the shoulder and slammed him against the door of the car. Joe felt something sharp prick his stomach.
"Don't make a big scene or you're not going to live long enough to hear what I've got to say," the voice ordered, lowering itself.
"If you didn't want a scene…" Joe paused to cough a couple of times. "…you should have picked a quieter spot."
"Nobody's close enough to notice. Now listen. Do you know who I am?"
"Should I?" Joe punctuated it with another cough.
"Let's just say I'm a very old friend and there's something I want from you."
"What? Revenge?"
"Yeah, but not against you. Somebody you can help me find."
"You've got a nice way of asking. I'll pass."
The sharp object—which Joe was sure was a knife—pricked him harder. "Don't think I wouldn't gain something by gutting you right now. I'm not the only one who wants revenge, and unlike me, the people I work for do want it against you. There's a contract out on you. It wouldn't hurt my feelings to collect it myself, but I'd rather make a deal with you: You help me find a certain person, and I help you catch the assassin that's after you."
There was no chance for Joe to respond before he heard Tony shout from the other side of the parking lot.
The attacker tightened his grip on Joe's shoulder. Then he let go and forced something into Joe's hand. "This will give you an idea what you're up against. Give it some thought while you're recovering." He punctuated the statement by stabbing his knife into Joe's side.
